Well firstly the tropes alone don't mean women don't have agency in the games that use them. Zelda gets kidnapped often, but in all the more recent games she still had agency. She still planned out how things were going to happen and directed Link. She was a damsel in distress, but she still had agency.
Older games such as the first and second are a little different, but they suffer from 'Too simplistic for anybody to have depth' syndrome. As soon as they had the technical capabilities to give Zelda more to do, they did.
Secondly, she says they are absurdly popular, but she doesn't make a case for it. Heck when she first mentioned the idea of women being both fridged and damseled I couldn't think of a single example. Past the games she mentioned, none of which I have ever played, I can't think of any time I have ever seen that, but she says it is popular so it must be, right?
Maybe it is! I don't play many AAA games, so I make for a very, very bad example, but the point is I still have no idea exactly how common any of these tropes are. Ok I know the damsel is popular, I ave played enough games for that, especially older ones, but how is somebody who has never played any game before in their life meant to know how popular any of these tropes actually are?
The way it is presented, somebody would very easily believe the majority of games have innocent women being killed by the male protagonist for drama, but I haven't seen it nearly as much as it is exclaimed. It is true that using descriptive language you will never be able to give 100% of people a good idea just how common something is, but if you are going to claim their is an epidemic you should try to give something objective.